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Modern art auction fetches $195m

Gauguin's Maternite II set a new record for the artist at $39.2m
Works by Gauguin and Modigliani helped an auction reach the highest total for an impressionist and modern art sale since 1990, making $194.3m (£106m).
Gauguin's 1899 Maternite II fetched $39.2m (£21.3m) at Thursday's sale at Sotheby's in New York.

A portrait by Modigliani set an artist record, going for $31.4m (£17m).

But Kandinsky's Sketch for Deluge II, estimated to make between $20m (£11m) and $30m, failed to sell - with no bids beyond $16.5m (£9m).

Despite the total, the sale fetched less than expected, with a pre-auction estimate of between $203.5m (£111m) and $275.6m (£150m).

On the Kandinsky, Sotheby's co-chair of impressionist and modern art, David Norman, said he was not too disappointed.

"We can be patient," he said, adding the portrait by Modigliani could not even fetch $600,000 (£325,000) when it went on offer in 1979-1980.

Sale season

"This work's time will come, too," he said.

Mondrian's modernist work New York 1941/Boogie Woogie was another record-breaker, selling for $21m.